The Faiza Shaheen deselection is really making me question whether I can vote Labour. Starmer may come across as offering a slightly softer, more egalitarian version of government than we've been getting. But I'm scared of empowering a team of people who seem to revel in exerting power by way of lying, manoeuvring and abuse of process.
Perhaps it could be argued that they will respect democracy, fairness and norms of decency when dealing with the wider country in a way that they manifestly don't internally with the Labour Party. But I'm not at all sure. Some truly horrible authoritarian regimes have actually be relatively liberal/benevolent in some ways. Saddam Hussein protected womens' rights and was a bastion against Islamic extremism.
To me, respect for democracy and treating people fairly is perhaps the most important political benchmark. I find this all very hard indeed.
I feel there's a massive leap from thinking that the Labour leadership is handling some of the candidate selection in a way which is at least inept (given how it's blown up in their faces) and possibly unfair to thinking that they're a threat to democracy in the UK or in any way even vaguely comparable to Saddam Hussein!
Also, they're not the party threatening to repeal human rights law, campaigning against the right of the courts to over-rule their illegal decisions, removing protest rights, introducing photo ID requirements with the explicit intent of suppressing votes from groups that tend not to vote for them, etc. etc.., so in terms of the long-term preservation of democratic institutions, I'd be rather more concerned about the other lot.
